Thunderstorm

Here comes one of Monday's thunderstorms

After it passed and the sun came out I began to walk up toward the greenhouse when suddenly there was a flash of light and almost instantly a loud crack as lightning struck a tree not very far to my left.  I turned around and went back to the house.

Out here on the farm I've learned to take thunderstorms seriously.  I remember the time, it must be thirty years ago now, when I was out in  the field across from the barn working on a fence. A storm came over the mountain top  but I was tightening a strand of barbed wire.  I kept on pulling on the wire.  A little rain wasn't going  to turn me to flame like the wicked witch in Oz.

At least I thought that was the case right up to the moment, only seconds later,  when the locust tree not more than twenty feet from me burst into flames, split in half,  and crashed across my new fence.   

When  a thunder storm comes this way I take notice.                                                                  

 Mostly around here, since weather largely comes from the west and we sit on the East slop of Highpoint Mountain, we don't get much notice that a storm is on its way, sometimes only a matter of a few dozen seconds before the wind  is screaming down the mountain side followed by lightning and then a torrent of rain.

Of course we do have an early warning system: JC, our Great Pyrenees.

When there's a storm coming,  sometimes hours before there's a sign of it he knows there's something up and he's following around at my foot steps.

The close the storm gets the closer he is behind me.